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Event Summary: Feeding Resilience and the House Climate Solutions Caucus
By Patricia Parera and John Conger
On December 1, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) held a policy briefing with the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus, to discuss the recent report, Feeding Resilience, which explores the nexus of climate change, food insecurity and national security and presents policy recommendations for the United States for addressing those issues.
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Event Summary: Climate Geopolitics and The U.S. Military at COP28
By Elsa Barron
On the first Monday of COP28 in Dubai, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) and the University of Pennsylvania hosted U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Army Rachel Jacobson and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Arctic and Global Resilience Iris Ferguson for a fireside chat with Dr. Scott Moore on “Climate Geopolitics and The U.S. Military: Risks and Opportunities.” In response to shifting global dynamics and intensifying risks to human well-being around the world as a result of climate change, the panel addressed how governments must adapt their institutions to meet unprecedented challenges—with specific attention to climate change-related geopolitical dynamics and how they shape U.S. partnerships, risks, and opportunities abroad.
DASD Ferguson began by sharing that their delegation has received questions about why the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been present at COP over the past two years, given that they are a non-traditional player in the climate space. In response, she noted that DoD has been working at the intersection between climate change and security for decades and the latest National Defense Strategy set a strong demand signal that climate change is a national security priority. The partnerships made at COP—with diplomats, policymakers, and industry representatives—are crucial to building the Department’s capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate challenges. Both speakers emphasized that the military has a lot to learn in an environment like COP28. While Jacobson said that they may not be known as “tree-huggers” Ferguson emphasized “if you’re not here, you’re not relevant” and both representatives indicated that they want to show up as relevant and useful partners to face climate challenges.
As an example of ongoing partnerships, Assistant Secretary Jacobson shared that the Army Corps of Engineers is engaged in climate adaptation around the world, especially related to water management. In Paraguay, they have a five-year partnership on river management, in Mozambique, they are collaborating on watersheds, and in Ecuador, they are helping repair environmental degradation from dam infrastructure. The Army Corps was also central in responding to the flooding in Pakistan last year, which CCS has previously highlighted as an example of climate security risk.
Ferguson added that the US military’s regional combatant commands are working globally to respond to climate change, which is often defined by local partners and allies as the number one security risk. She applauded the development of the CCS’s Military Responses to Climate Hazards (MiRCH) Tracker, which illustrates the significance of militaries as some of the first responders to climate disasters, not only in the United States but around the world. On this point, Jacobson added that the Army’s strength in logistics is what sets it apart as first responders to climate disasters. Increasingly, troops are training to respond to climate-related hazards because that is what they are being called up to do. In light of this growing need across countries and communities, DoD is thinking about ways to build the capacity of partner militaries, particularly through the Department’s Defense Operational Resilience International Cooperation (DORIC) pilot project.
It is not only climate adaptation but also the transition to renewable energy that comes with risks and opportunities for the US military. Ferguson stated that the war in Ukraine provided a wake-up call for the need to ensure sufficient energy resources from a dependable source. Domestically, she noted this can be accomplished through distributed generation on military bases. Considerations relating to supply chain reliability and interoperability must be made, but both speakers emphasized the importance of decarbonization to reduce the emissions footprint of the military. Returning to base infrastructure, Jacobson noted that installing microgrids is essential for both energy security and sustainability. Even on the operational side, it makes sense to switch to renewable energy sources. She shared that in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of the most vulnerable soldiers were those transporting fuel. Those vulnerabilities can be avoided with sustainable technologies that minimize the need for oil.
In response to the conversation on stage, the audience inquired about military emissions reporting, noting the gap in UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) emissions reporting requirements for militaries, and the importance of transparency and accountability for reducing emissions from all global contributors. Another audience member wondered whether DoD might consider U.S. investments into the Loss and Damage fund as an opportunity to support communities facing the harshest climate change impacts, resulting in positive security dividends. Both of these questions present opportunities for further thinking in the wake of COP28, especially if DoD plans to continue its attendance at the global climate conference in years to come.
Feeding Resilience: A Review of Policies at the Intersection of Climate Change, Food Security and National Security Policy
A CCS Report by Patricia Parera and Brigitte Hugh
Edited by Tom Ellison and Francesco Femia
Executive Summary
This report is the first of a new initiative by The Center for Climate and Security (CCS) dedicated to shining a light on the U.S. national security benefits of addressing climate change, food insecurity, and stability together. The report begins by outlining the global state of play on food security, followed by a preliminary assessment of existing U.S. initiatives that could be scaled up to increase the impact of the government’s response to climate change, food insecurity, and national security. Currently, policies and interventions often include two of the focus areas but are rarely scoped to consider all three. Thus, this landscape assessment focuses on three current nexus areas: (1) food insecurity and national security, (2) food insecurity and climate change, and (3) climate change and national security.
Following are preliminary key findings and policy recommendations considered to be a priority for policymaking action.
Climate and Ecological Security in the 2023 Annual Threat Assessment
By Erin Sikorsky and Michael Zarfos
On March 8, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and other top U.S. intelligence agency leaders came before the Senate Intelligence Committee to present their Annual Threat Assessment (ATA)—a rundown of the top threats facing the United States in the coming year. As in previous iterations, climate and ecological security issues featured in the briefing and submitted testimony from the DNI, with the unclassified version of the testimony’s Foreword stating, “ The accelerating effects of climate change are placing more of the world’s population, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, under threat from extreme weather, food insecurity, and humanitarian disasters, fueling migration flows and increasing the risks of future pandemics as pathogens exploit the changing environment.”
Ecological Security
In the question and answer portion of the hearing, Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM) highlighted (1:29:30) the Council on Strategic Risks 2020 report, “The Security Threat that Binds Us,” which he commended for its recommendation of elevating ecological security in U.S. national security policymaking. He noted in particular its assessment of China’s illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. DNI Avril Haines acknowledged seeing the report, her concern regarding IUU fishing, and explained that the intelligence community was working to follow some of its recommendations, including a greater integration of the federal scientific community with the Intelligence Community (IC).
The ATA identified IUU fishing as a significant driver of stock depletion across the globe. It also highlighted the converging risks that combine with overexploitation to cause species declines. Human pollution (e.g. agricultural and sewage nutrient runoff) and climate change (e.g. warmer, more acidic water) increase the vulnerability of marine species to decline as important ecosystems (e.g. seagrass and coral reefs) are undermined.
Warming waters are expected to drive important species into new regions of the ocean, while also removing some species from countries’ territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). The presence of heavily subsidized IUU fleets—such as those fielded by China—increases competition for these diminishing and shifting fish stocks. Poorer countries that rely on the sea are ill-equipped to compete with these fleets, leading to reduced economic and food security that may contribute to internal unrest.
More broadly, the ATA outlines how ecological degradation in general (e.g. deforestation, pollution, wildlife trafficking) can combine with climate change to threaten human and national security. As each of these anthropogenic stressors progresses, natural resources (e.g. food, soil, timber, and water) will in some regions decline or shift in their geographic availability. These outcomes, combined with a changing climate, will impact human health through malnutrition and the spread of unfamiliar diseases. Natural disasters will add immediate stress to punctuate these gradual processes. Where these combined stressors do not immediately contribute to conflict, they will displace populations and exacerbate inequality, which in turn may destabilize societies.
Climate Finance
An important new angle of climate security in this year’s ATA was its focus on potential geopolitical challenges related to climate finance. The ATA noted, “Tensions also are rising between countries over climate financing. High-and middle-income countries still have not met their 2015 Paris Agreement pledges to provide $100 billion per year to low-income countries by 2020, and low-income countries want more assistance with adapting to climate effects.”
The assessment goes on to raise last year’s climate-driven floods in Pakistan and the country’s subsequent calls for loss and damage funding as an example. Certainly, the dynamics at COP27 around the creation of a loss and damage fund, including the eventual agreement by developing countries that China would not benefit from such a fund, reflect the changing global dynamics of climate finance. This highlight in the ATA underscores a point the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) made in a briefer earlier this year about the security links to climate finance issues, and the importance of the United States understanding these connections as it approaches allies and partners on climate issues.
Overall, it is heartening to see both the IC exploring a wide range of climate and ecological security issues in the ATA, and members of Congress expressing increased interest in these critical issues.